Some teenagers don't want to give up the right to behave like a baby. Some youth clubs send out a circle of friends to celebrate on Children’s Day. Some middle-aged people stubbornly order themselves to run two marathons a year. The whole mood in modern society is that everyone pretends to be young and no one is old. We like to hear the prediction that biotechnology can extend life in the future, and we emphasize lifelong learning.
But people will age. "Not getting old" is just a wishful thinking. The rate of increase in human life expectancy is declining very fast, and there may be new breakthroughs in the future, but I don’t believe that many people who are alive now can walk upright to 135 years old. The laws of nature will eventually work to some extent. Maybe you were "a poem at the age of ten years old." You used to be the youngest and smartest person in every room, but one day, you can only watch others "the young phoenix is clear than the old phoenix."
The reality is that we cannot always avoid aging, we should learn to face aging correctly. In this lecture, let’s talk about a few new studies on aging, and maybe you can get a little new understanding from them.
The good news is that you will not age as fast as your parents. The retirement age in China in 1978 was 60 for men and 50 for women. 50 years old, today's 50-year-old women may be reading, studying, and dating, or even preparing to study, 50 years old is considered middle-aged. But at that time in 1978, 50 years old was really old.
What happened during this period from 1978 to the present? There is no magical effect, it has nothing to do with genetic mutations. You age slowly because of your good living conditions.
A Finnish study conducted a long-term follow-up survey of two generations born in the 1910s and 1940s [1]. Both generations had physical examinations at the ages of 75 and 80, and compared records and found that the generation born in the 1940s walked faster, had stronger hand grips, stronger calves, better language fluency, and brain The reaction score is higher. They are more able to perform daily activities like bathing and dressing independently. There are other studies that have obtained the same result. People really live younger generations.
70 years old now is just like 60 years old in the past.
Scientists have analyzed that the factor that has the greatest impact on the body is nutrition. Finland became the first country in the world to provide students with free lunch in 1943. People of that generation grew well from snacks, and naturally grew well. This is manifested in their larger body size and more flexible body. Of course, life after adulthood will definitely have an effect, at least the new generation of people have a higher level of medical care.
For the brain, basically the only influencing factor is the number of years of education. The reason why the new generation of old people are better at their brains is that they generally receive longer education. When they were in their twenties, they just caught up with the popularization of university education, while the older generation generally did not go to university. But those who have gone to college among the older generation have their brains as good as the new generation when they grow old.
This is an encouraging conclusion. "Education" is not about performing some magical ritual to perform brain surgery. We can completely regard lifelong learning as increasing the number of years of education-which means you can take the initiative to make yourself older.
The medicine that can really make people live longer is not reliable yet, but some scientifically proven methods can help you delay aging [2].
One is walking. Note that it is not the kind of leisurely walking slowly. The best way of walking for health is brisk walking: you need to reach a speed that makes you a little breathless, and you have to sweat to reach the standard. It's best to walk outdoors and get some sunshine, 30 minutes a day is recommended.
One is intermittent fasting. You may have heard of experiments with mice. Not feeding each meal can significantly prolong the lifespan of mice-but humans are not mice, and humans have a long lifespan. However, there is still a series of studies that support the practice of intermittent fasting. The most popular method now is called the "5:2 diet": among the seven days a week, you choose five days to eat normally and two days to go on a diet. On dieting days, only consume 500 to 600 calories a day, and it is best to fast for 14 to 16 hours overnight. Studies have shown that this method can combat type II diabetes and Alzheimer's disease.
One is sports. People over the age of 40 lose 1% of their muscles every year. Strength and intensity aerobic exercise is good for the muscles, such as rowing or weight training. Anaerobic exercise of running and jumping is good for bone density. If your joints can bear it, it is recommended to jump ten to twenty times a day.
One is reading. Yes, reading can also increase life. A study from Yale University believes that reading more than 3.5 hours a week can increase your life span by two years. But pay attention to reading, not reading newspapers, magazines, or mobile phones. It may be because of a different sense of immersion. Even reading for 30 minutes a day is good. Experts recommend reading before going to bed. If you can't read it, it will at least help you sleep.
One is to continue working. If you are not tired from work, it is best to retire later. Work can bring you social interaction, can give you a sense of purpose... at least it can make you move every day.
One is to learn new things. It's not that this thing has to be of practical value to you. The purpose now is to exercise your brain and make your neurons grow new connections. Some people learn to cook new dishes, and some learn to sing and dance. My private suggestion is that you should learn what young people do, such as playing video games, learning about new movies and popular songs, and playing around with programming. The key word is "new": calligraphy, old cadre-style poems, square dance and other senior college programs are meaningless.
There are other things. For example, do good deeds and contribute to the community. You can take a short nap during the day, but 25 minutes is better, more than 90 minutes is harmful. You can drink coffee. Have friends. Be optimistic. You can choose healthy foods such as olive oil. wait wait wait.
There is scientific research behind these suggestions. I suspect that some of these conclusions may not be able to distinguish between correlation and causality, but it does not matter, anyway, you know that people with longevity do it. These are definitely more reliable than those posted in the circle of older friends-I still recommend watching more and new things posted by young people.
But even if you do this, you will still grow old.
Let's face it, it's just a matter of getting faster and slower. Your bodily functions are bound to decline. From a certain day, your knees will no longer be able to withstand bouncing. If you want to walk fast, you can’t get up. You may need to use crutches to get up.
But you may not be able to accept the change in cognitive ability even more.
There are many things that middle-aged people worry about. Some studies say that 53 is the most unhappy age for self-assessment in life [3]. However, if you have a good enough education and maintain continuous learning, the middle-aged brain is actually very useful [4]. Your crystal intelligence is at its peak. You will be very good at actively regulating emotions. You can choose to look at everything and think it's good. Chinese people like to say "want to open up" when persuading people, and middle-aged people want to open up the most.
But in old age, this is not the case. Maybe eighty years old, maybe seventy years old, maybe sixty years old, your cognitive ability, your emotional regulation ability will get worse.
A person's character will not be stereotyped in middle age. Psychologists like to use the so-called "big five personality" to examine the five dimensions of personality: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, pleasantness, and neurosis. Now there is evidence that, in addition to "agreeableness" does not change with age, the other four aspects will change [5]. And it's not changing in a good direction.
People's openness, conscientiousness and extroversion will gradually decline from a certain year. The old man slowly ceased to be interested in new things, he could no longer listen to opinions that differed from his own, and he was unwilling to live in a strange place and did not want to contact strangers. The old man slowly doesn't want to worry about it anymore, just do whatever you like, I don't care about it in the future. The elderly will shrink their social networks and only interact with the few people they know most.
And neurological will increase. Nervousness means whether the person will be irritable and full of anxiety. Originally, people's nervousness is decreased in middle age. When people just retire, they may feel that they no longer need to be anxious, and enjoy life is over. But in the true old age, people will become anxious again, even suspicious. It's just that this time the anxiety is not about "worrying about the future of the country" as I did when I was young, but about my own body.
People are not as easy to face death as they thought when they were young.
Some old scholars can still chat and laugh with young people at the age of 70 or 80. They still say something very literary or very passionate. But if you taste it carefully, there is actually nothing new in it. Any thoughts are the previous theories. You have to ask him to tell him what he thinks about a new book, and he will tell you that it is all he knew 30 years ago. I was very unconvinced with them when I encountered such a thing before, but now my nerves have declined, and I feel more sympathetic.
Is there a romantic way of getting older?
I recently read a book by Sang Bing, an expert on modern Chinese history[6]. Mr. Sang Bing described his wonderful plan for old age in the preface. His excitement is not to sing and dance, but to learn. Do real learning.
Chinese history is too long and the life span of scholars is too short. Sang Bing said: "Learning is always a regrettable career, especially history. You must be extremely clever and dumb. By the time you have all the skills and knowledge, you will have a lot of hardship and time." He himself " In a handful of calculations, there are many projects that have yet to be completed. There are dozens of large-scale materials and chronological series each, and dozens of books are being written, and they often go by analogy and give out many unexpected ideas. New branch."
This is a sigh of "I'm afraid I'm running out of time", and a cry of "A gentleman is sick in the last days and he is not called Yan". For this reason, Sang Bing adopted an active contraction strategy: he would not go to activities that he could not participate in, and those who could not see would disappear, and he would enjoy himself in learning.
This old method is in line with the laws of the mental activities of the elderly, but it has a heroic spirit. Mr. Sang Bing does not intend to spend a perfect life like a "perfect old man". What he challenges is a career that can never be finished, and he is determined to leave with his ideals and regrets. This is the old method of heroes.
However, the hero will eventually die.
Is there any mentality that can face death as positively as facing aging? Please allow me to imitate Wang Guowei and borrow three famous sayings to illustrate the three advanced understandings facing old age. They can be the three life stages on the road to aging, or they can be said to be the three realms.
The first realm is "The most unretainable in the world, Zhu Yan resigns to the mirror and flowers." This is Wang Guowei's own verse, which means that the laws of nature are irresistible. Everyone yearns for the young, we really don't accept the old, but there is no way.
The second state is "when the meeting is passed, people will be old and old." This is the words of the calligrapher Sun Guoting. It means that you can't learn advanced techniques when you are young. You must reach the peak when you are old, have enough experience and mastery. This is a celebration of old age, and there is always hope.
The third state is "the impermanence of all actions." This is what the Buddhist scriptures say. Impermanence in Pali is called anitya. I recently read this word from an article by an evolutionary biologist, David P. Barash [7].
From the point of view of biology from Balash's perspective, there is no difference between young and old, which is good or bad. Living and dying are equally normal. Everything is constantly changing, and it is definitely impossible to stay, but Balash said that "impermanence" does not just mean change-impermanence also represents the fluidity of matter. Every particle that composes life comes from the environment by chance, and the creature just returns to the environment after death.
Considering that I am a part of the whole nature, death does not make the world less. Once in the field, Balash heard a word from a forest ranger on the walkie-talkie. He was very spiritual in Buddhism.
"I found a dead elk in Agnes Creek. It broke down very well. Over."
“Dead elk in Agnes Creek decomposing nicely. Over.”
English is nicely. It's dead, it's broken down, but it's also good.
【Notes】
[1] Claudia Wallis, Is 70 Really the New 60? Scientific American, January 1, 2021.
[2] Susan Saunders and Annabel Streets, Happy ever after: 25 ways to live well into old age, The Guardian, 26 May 2019.
[3] The second season of Elite Day Class, "Your Midfield War"
[4] The first season of Elite Day Class, "Middle-aged Brains Are Better"
[5] Emma Young, Here’s How Our Personality Changes As We Age, BPS Research Digest, June 30, 2020.
[6] Sang Bing, "Academic World: Scholars and Style of Study in the Late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China" (2017)
[7] David P. Barash, Over Time, Buddhism and Science Agree, Nautilus, Dec. 23, 2020.